What benefit? Most "inventions" hit the world @ large as soon as products incorporating them are released. Same world @ large gets the details after someone pokes around in those products & figures out how they work.
That is practically always before patents expire.
Truly smart innovations will survive over time. Obvious "inventions" are often trivial enough to be "invented" independently again & again.
Patents mostly add a load of red tape, and a big stick that large companies (& patent trolls!) can hit smaller companies or individuals with.
Overall benefit to society, even if patents work as intended? Debateable (and forever being debated, eg. between economists).
In a small society, an inventor taking solution-to-big-problem into their grave, is a problem. In a world with 8 billion+ souls, not so much. Someone else will repeat what 1st inventor didn't release into the world.
Companies innovate because they want to grab market share by getting there first. Losing 'protection' doesn't stop this process. It just removes that big stick that would-be competitors are beaten down with.
Can you share any literature on economists debating whether the patent system is worth it? I'm not familiar with materials like that, and it's been my experience that the patent system isn't really a debate outside of the hackernews and software development communities.
The book opens up with a case of James Watt (after whom the Watt SI units are named), and that even though he came up with the steam engine, only after the patent for steam engine expired, was the world able to benefit from his invention. Most of the time while patent was active, he was busy fighting off others, trying to extract financial gain (AFAIK). Not only that, his initial design was subpar, and the improvement that was important was actually patented by somebody else.
That is practically always before patents expire.
Truly smart innovations will survive over time. Obvious "inventions" are often trivial enough to be "invented" independently again & again.
Patents mostly add a load of red tape, and a big stick that large companies (& patent trolls!) can hit smaller companies or individuals with.
Overall benefit to society, even if patents work as intended? Debateable (and forever being debated, eg. between economists).
In a small society, an inventor taking solution-to-big-problem into their grave, is a problem. In a world with 8 billion+ souls, not so much. Someone else will repeat what 1st inventor didn't release into the world.
Companies innovate because they want to grab market share by getting there first. Losing 'protection' doesn't stop this process. It just removes that big stick that would-be competitors are beaten down with.